


Strange Bedfellows 🛌

by murderlight



Category: Bleach
Genre: Cold Weather, Cuddling & Snuggling, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27757384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murderlight/pseuds/murderlight
Summary: Stripped of his hierro, Grimmjow takes shelter from a storm one winter's night.
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 125
Kudos: 917





	Strange Bedfellows 🛌

**Author's Note:**

> some self-indulgent bed sharing for your weekend <3

The night was bitterly cold: a winter storm lashing freezing sleet sideways against the house, driven by a powerful wind. It was the kind of weather to fall asleep to beneath thick, warm blankets, and that was exactly what Ichigo had been doing when his window was flung open and a large shadow darted inside.

“What the hell?!” Ichigo spluttered as he jackknifed upright, catching a face full of bad weather before he could grab the window’s edge and haul it shut again. He almost knocked everything off his desk trying to reach his lamp, until an icy hand grabbed his wrist and clicked it on for him. The light illuminated a very familiar face. “Grimmjow? It’s gotta be after midnight, the hell are you doing here?”

“Trying not to freeze to death,” was the grunted reply. “Kisuke’s inhibiting my fuckin’ hierro for science and this storm hit before I could get back to the store. You were closer. Get me a towel or something.”

That was how Ichigo ended up stumbling out of his cozy nest of blankets in search of a towel, only to come back with one and find Grimmjow half-stripped out of his sodden clothes, boots and jacket off, his jumpsuit shoved down alarmingly low on his hips. Rain had soaked him through; in the lamplight it shone on his skin, running down his scarred chest and over his punctured abdomen. His hair was the main culprit, full of water it hung limply around his eyes and stuck to his neck, dripping water down his shoulders. Ichigo stared in true dismay, not sure if he was still asleep or not. The towel was snatched from his grip.

“Thanks.” Grimmjow dumped the towel on his own head and started rubbing his hair dry like it had personally wronged him. Entirely confused why being cold meant breaking and entering his house, Ichigo dazedly turned to his wardrobe and started looking for a change of clothes that would fit a leggy arrancar with broader shoulders than him. Figuring from the jumpsuit that Grimmjow didn’t like anything tight, all he really had was a pair of sweatpants. They weren’t even very warm, more for spring morning jogs when he didn’t want the world to see his bare knees.

“I don’t really have anything that’ll fit you,” Ichigo found himself saying apologetically, wondering why he felt like a bad host when Grimmjow had invited himself in during a storm. He turned his back when they were snatched out of his hands too, staring at the wall in his pyjamas as things rustled and Grimmjow swore behind him. “I could get you a blanket to put around your shoulders though. Why has Urahara inhibited your hierro? Scratch that, how? I thought it was part of your skin.”

“He’s trialling a new arrancar gigai or something for Harribel. Hierro isn’t compatible with it, keeps rejecting so he’s shot me up with some drug to test suppressing the reiryoku armour layer in my skin. That’s what we call hierro.” A wet towel was dumped on Ichigo’s head, blinding him. By the time he pulled it off to frown at Grimmjow, he was already in his bed and pulling the covers up to his neck. “Gonna stay here tonight.”

Call it delayed reaction from being startled awake at ass o’clock, but for a moment Ichigo just stood there staring with his fingers clenched in a wet towel, knowing that water had been on Grimmjow’s naked skin a moment ago, staring at the long lump of his former enemy as he burrowed his face into Ichigo’s pillow, making some kind of pleased huffing sound as he made himself comfortable.

In Ichigo’s bed.

Wearing nothing but borrowed sweatpants.

“Are you warm enough, asshole?” Ichigo griped half-heartedly, still mentally trying to find his balance. _Grimmjow_. In his _bed_. “I’m not going to kick you back out into a storm, but where the hell am I supposed to sleep now? I’m not a homeless shelter.” 

Despite that claim, he did start grabbing up the discarded pieces of clothing and shoved them into his own hamper in the corner of the room. The boots and belts he nudged under the bed with his foot. As for Pantera, he grabbed it with both hands and studied it for a moment. It really was a beautiful sword unsheathed, but concealed in its scabbard only the blue hilt braiding and the metal guard were familiar to his eyes. It needed a slight polish. Ichigo leaned it upright against the drawers at the end of the bed. When he turned back, Grimmjow was watching him with serious eyes.

“I’ve killed people for less. Nobody touches Pantera but me.”

“I grab your sword all the time,” Ichigo yawned, sitting on the end of the bed and rubbing his eyes. The side of his head was damp from the blast of rain he took. “You’re just normally attached to it.”

Grimmjow seemed to absorb that for a moment, frowning from his extremely comfortable position in the centre of Ichigo’s bed. A place Ichigo himself would like to be, but it looked like that was out of the question. Man, and sleeping on their lumpy couch really sucked.

But Grimmjow chose that moment to do the strangest thing: seemingly coming to a conclusion in his own head, he shuffled over on the mattress until he was pressed closest to the wall and turned the blanket back.

“Get in.”

A hundred different embarrassed refusals sat right on the tip of Ichigo’s tongue. For an instant he was too surprised to speak. Get into his bed next to Grimmjow? Half-naked Grimmjow and all his unfairly sculpted muscles? To sleep? What if he forgot during the night and woke up and killed Ichigo by mistake? What if their asses touched? Oh fuck, what if—

“Yeah, okay,” Ichigo said, getting up and clicking off the light. “Hope you don’t kick or snore. Are you still cold?”

“No,” Grimmjow said stubbornly in the darkness. The moment Ichigo had slid beneath the blankets he reefed them straight up to his nose. A quick foot check said he was freezing. “Don’t touch me with your gross little toes.”

“I’m wearing socks, thanks, and those toes are fetish material. Feel grateful.” Trying to leave a politeness gap between them left Ichigo hugging the mattress edge, mostly sacrificing his entire pillow. Grimmjow was still sprawled on his back like an asshole, taking up most of the space. “Are you going to freak out if I bump into you in the night? I can’t take a hit from you in this body.”

“Maybe.” Well, at least he was honest. “It’s better if you’re close to begin with.” With no other warning than that, Grimmjow rustled under the sheets and grabbed Ichigo from behind, hauling him back across the bed until he hit a hard wall that was almost definitely Grimmjow’s chest. And stomach. And legs. And he definitely wasn’t thinking about the space between those two. A shockingly cold nose was pushed into the side of his neck, followed by a whole cheek and some damp hair. The hand across his ribs became most of an arm that tightened around him, sealing them both together in a long line of startling contact. Ichigo had never been so close to another person in his entire life.

He didn’t hate it.

“You’re so fucking warm,” Grimmjow muttered a while later, pushing the words into the vulnerable skin of Ichigo’s neck. For as cold as his face felt, his breath was almost hot by comparison. “Didn’t think people could even be this warm.” A small shudder went through the shoulders pressed behind Ichigo’s. Without thinking too hard about it, he reached up under the sheets and covered the icy fingers clenched in his sleep shirt with his own. Greedily Grimmjow just burrowed against him further. Maybe losing hierro made a winter storm feel even colder. It made Ichigo wonder just how hot his skin felt by contrast.

“Want me to turn the heating on too? I could blast it for a while til the room is warmer.”

“Nah. You’re enough for me.”

“Okay then,” Ichigo replied weakly, wondering why his chest felt so damn warm when there was a fist made of ice pressed against it. “Can you give me a bit more of the pillow?”

“Guess so.”

When they were finally arranged and settled again, this time with a lot more pillow under Ichigo’s cheek, Grimmjow spoke once more into the darkness, his lips brushing soft skin with each syllable.

“Don’t think I could do this with anyone else. How do you always fuckin’ manage to get under my skin?” The words were absently annoyed, sure, but mostly Grimmjow sounded resigned. He wasn’t shivering anymore, but he also wasn’t moving even half an inch away. If anything, his fingers were flexing gently in his shirt, almost tangling between Ichigo’s when they relaxed. His rival, his former enemy, cuddling him in a too-small bed. And he thought Ichigo was getting under _his_ skin.

“I think you trust me the same way I trust you,” Ichigo said into the shadows inside his eyelids. “Outside of a battle, we like each other a lot.” Silence greeted that pearl of wisdom, but it wasn’t awkward or hostile. Grimmjow seemed to think it over for a while.

“Inside one, too.” A sudden yawn bathed Ichigo’s skin with heat. “I’m gonna sleep now. If I do anything weird just call out. I sleep light.”

“Okay,” Ichigo agreed, his heart still thumping a little too fast at Grimmjow’s ready agreement. They did like each other. They really, really did. And they both knew it. “Sweet dreams, I guess.”

“Dipshit,” Grimmjow muttered, snorting softly. “G’night.”

With nothing else to say, feeling warm and comfortable and embraced, Ichigo listened to the pattering rain hit his window and the soft breaths against his neck until the world slowly swirled away into languid darkness. He knew before he fully drifted off that it would be some of the best sleep he’d ever had.

It was a sound that woke him, maybe, but the room was silent when Ichigo came to awareness. Strangely, his face was pushed into something hard and his legs seemed squashed under a heavy weight. Opening his eyes slowly, Ichigo squinted blearily into the watery dawn light.

Oh.

Well, that explained a lot. At some point in the night Ichigo had rolled over and burrowed his face into Grimmjow’s chest, almost disappearing under the blankets to do it. His pillow had become an arm and the heavy weight pinning his legs was Grimmjow’s thigh, hitched straight over his own like a snare. Grimmjow was dead to the world, sleeping a lot more deeply than he’d advertised he could. It was almost cute to see him frowning even when he was asleep, breathing softly through parted lips. His hair was a curling dishevelled mess that fell over his brow. He looked very…something, to Ichigo’s eyes. Definitely something.

Under Ichigo’s fascinated gaze, blue eyes opened and looked down at him with sleepy contentment.

“Your head’s heavy,” Grimmjow muttered, flexing his bicep.

“Your leg’s heavy,” Ichigo retorted, turning his hips a little. “Go back to sleep.”

“You gonna?”

“Yeah. Too cold to move for another four hours at least.” The arm under Ichigo’s cheek bent behind his head, a hand cupping his shoulder and drawing him in closer. It didn’t slide away afterwards, and Ichigo didn’t want it to. Above him, Grimmjow inhaled a long, deep breath that shuddered out in a slow sigh of sleepy pleasure.

“Few more hours,” Grimmjow agreed quietly, and didn’t fight the arm Ichigo slid over his side in return.

**Author's Note:**

> ❄️⛈🧡🛌💙⛈❄️


End file.
